A shooting outside a money-exchange office in Panipat in March, another at a singer’s gym in Delhi in June, and gunfire aimed at a Bollywood actor in Mumbai on Sunday, 18 October, share a common thread. Each was meant as a threat, and each was carried out in the name of the Lawrence Bishnoi gang. One name has come up again and again over the past seven months: Anil Pandit.
Around 7 pm on Sunday, Tiger Shroff was leaving a football club in Juhu when the accused allegedly opened fire at his car. She said a tip-off came in the morning and “our team, within just 15 minutes, set a trap and thoroughly searched the entire train. On 17 September, a motorcyclist fired at a Range Rover belonging to Haryanvi singer Diler Kharkiya outside his farmhouse near Kharak village in Bhiwani. On 3 October, police arrested Rohit alias Budha after an encounter in Sonipat.
The Tribune reported that investigators were looking at Pandit’s network, and a post bearing his name later claimed responsibility. The Tribune reported he was wanted in the Kharkiya case and others.
Soon after, a post from an account named “Anil Pandit Anmol Bishnoi” claimed responsibility. “Sabka number aayega,” he said, meaning “Everyone’s turn will come. Anil Pandit is linked to Lawrence Bishnoi,” Gautam said. “They will be interrogated to determine what they did with the weapons, and appropriate legal action will follow,” she said. Police said the suspects spoke to their handlers on encrypted apps, including Signal and Zangi.
The latest case brought him back into focus. The actor escaped without gunshot injuries, but his driver was hurt. The account was later deleted. An audio clip attributed to Pandit also emerged, in which he warned Bollywood celebrities against working with Salman Khan. Mumbai Police are examining whether the claims are genuine. They are Rehan, alias Sukka, from Sonipat in Haryana; Hritik Kurmi, alias Roshan, from Begusarai in Bihar, who had lived in Mumbai for the past few years; and a minor. They were travelling in a general compartment and planned to reach Delhi and then flee to Nepal. “Based on preliminary questioning, we got to know that Anil Pandit had been in contact with Rehan. The weapons have not been recovered. Signal, run by the US non-profit Signal Foundation, offers end-to-end encrypted chats and calls and is used by journalists, activists and privacy-conscious users, as well as criminals. Zangi, a privacy-focused app founded in Armenia, is known for working on low bandwidth and collecting minimal data. It is popular in parts of the Middle East and South Asia. Kharkiya was not there. Taken together, the cases show a familiar pattern. Local shooters allegedly receive instructions, weapons and money from handlers abroad, and the targets range from a money-exchange office to some of the biggest names in the film and music industries. The Shroff attack has raised fresh questions about how gangsters thousands of kilometres away can keep threatening people and allegedly orchestrate violence on Indian streets.
On Monday, Kota Superintendent of Police Tejaswani Gautam said three suspects had been detained on the Pune-Jaipur Express.
